From ghegyes@nalusda.gov Wed Mar 2 14:58:08 1994 Date: Wed, 2 Mar 1994 11:10:21 -0500 (EST) From: Gabriel Hegyes To: SANET-mg Subject: NEWS: Foes of the earth (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 28 Feb 94 13:29:13 PST From: Alan McGowen To: res-econ@unixg.ubc.ca Cc: alanm@hpindbu.cup.hp.com Subject: Foes of the earth (fwd) Reposted from nwfor. Alan McGowen ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- _The Greenpeace Guide to Anti-environmental Organizations_ by Carl Deal. Berkeley: Odonian Press, 1993--95 pages, notes, index. ISBN 1-878825-05-4, LC JA75.8.G77, US$ 5.00. --Reviewed by Dale Wharton, February 1994 [Test Deleted] ...50 organizations deflect and usually defeat efforts at conservation. The book lists addresses, officers, backers. (Transnational corporations--TNCs--provide financial support.) The 50 recognize our concern. So they prudently camouflage their work. Misleading tactics unite the diverse organizations. Example: they claim that conserving resources and preserving ecosystems hurt the economy. They favour the false theme that rich big-city treehuggers threaten smalltown employment. The 50 usually profess that they, too, care about Nature. "So don't be fooled by a green facade," warns Carl Deal. He arranges the 50 organizations into six types. 1 PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRMS. PR is Type One. Its rank befits PR's virtual conquest of the press. Corporate diplomacy now permeates popular media, with press releases comprising about 40% of the "news." In manipulating events, greenwashing aims to coopt or neutralize activists. The fees enrich PR firms, some of them TNCs themselves. Take Burson-Marsteller. Its 56 branches spread through 28 countries. (B-M's Canadian chair, Allan Gotlieb, is also a deputy chair of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission and former ambassador to the USA.) B-M does damage control and "issues management" for the likes of the BC Forest Alliance (a "grassroots" disguise of B-M), MacMillan Bloedel, Exxon, Union Carbide, General Motors, Hydro-Quebec, Procter & Gamble, the Business Council for Sustainable Development, etc. Other relationists to watch out for: Hill & Knowlton of New York, Shandwick of London, and E. Bruce Harrison Co. of Washington DC. That last one has specialized in "environmental communication" for 20 years. Its clients include the Chemical Manufacturers Assn., Monsanto (asbestos), Waste Management, and Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Assn. 2 CORPORATE FRONT GROUPS. These outfits have two tasks. First, divert and lull consumers. Pretend that we can go on destroying the environment at this rate without severe consequences. Second, persuade lawmakers to roll back unprofitable regulations. The National Wetlands Coalition, for instance, drafted a law to restrict the definition of wetlands (streams, ponds, lakes, swamps, marshes, coastal regions). The law would compensate US property owners (usually corporations) for any costs or financial loss from applying environmental regulations. Two other examples are The Evergreen Foundation and BC Forest Alliance (see PR firms). Their true message is that conservancy is unreasonable and extreme, stems from bad science, and ignores the full social and economic outcomes. (They neglect the loss of forestry jobs owing to mechanization, overcutting, and export of minimally processed logs.) 3 THINK TANKS. The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute deny the evidence of environmental crises. (President Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, applauded the Heritage Foundation's suggestion to open federal wilderness to strip mining.) This type has two newcomers. The Science and Environmental Policy Project branched off a Moonie think tank (see type 6 for more about Moon). Citizens for the Environment view strict deregulation as the solution. 4 LEGAL FOUNDATIONS. Mountain States Legal Foundation (founding president, James Watt), Pacific Legal Foundation (first--in 1973), National Legal Center for the Public Interest (umbrella for scattered locals). All use the US courts to fight government regulations and citizen lawsuits intended to protect the environment. The foundations have been effective. In 1992 they won a major Supreme Court decision (Lucas v South Carolina Coastal Commission). It held that government regulation of a developer's private property amounted to a government seizure. Thus it was unconstitutional. 5 ENDOWMENTS AND CHARITIES. Private philanthropies may collaborate with TNCs. They can pipe in untraced corporate money and underwrite attacks on the conservation community. In 1991 alone, four of the largest of these charities disbursed more than $150 million for the purpose. These four were the Lilly Endowment (pharmaceuticals), the John Olin Foundation (munitions), and two outposts of the Mellon steel empire: the Carthage Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. 6 WISE USE AND SHARE GROUPS. The Wise Use movement links contrived "grassroots" locals in the western USA. Founder Ron Arnold aspires "...to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely." He got seed money in 1988 from the American Freedom Coalition, an affiliate of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. (The Moon church also supported Latin American deathsquads in the 1980s.) Wise Use's financial backing now comes from timber, mining, ranching, chemical, and recreation companies and their trade associations. Wise Use may get rough. It "... can do things the industry can't. It can stress the sanctity of the family, the virtue of the close-knit community. And it can turn the public against your enemies." One goal of Wise Use: convert "all decaying and oxygen-using forest growth in the National Forests into young stands of oxygen-producing carbon-dioxide-absorbing trees to...prevent the greenhouse effect...." Canada's Share movement mirrors the Wise Use movement. ### __ This review draws on investigative reports by John Dillon, Rutland VT; Johan Carlisle, San Francisco; and Joyce Nelson, Toronto. -- _ Dale Wharton dale@dale.cam.org M O N T R E A L Te souviens-tu?